A visitor to the station is revealed to be Vash, returned at last from her journeyings with Q. However, their arrival on the station marks the beginning of a series of issues that almost destroys the station.

This episode provides examples of:

Artistic License – Biology: An example that would go on to have surprisingly far-ranging implications for the rest of the show's run. Near the start of the episode Bashir says that he missed out on top spot on his class because he confused a pre-ganglionic fiber with a post-ganglionic nerve. However, many people — including the wife of the episode's writer, no less — pointed out that this was such a huge error that even a first-year medical student wouldn't make it, let alone a final-year student in the running to finish top of his class. As a result of this, the Season 3 episode "Distant Voices" was written essentially as a Fix Fic to solve this, and the Retcon would be taken to even further, much more significant proportions in Season 5's "Doctor Bashir I Presume?"

Ascended Extra: Lampshaded - Q's reaction to Miles confronting him is a bored "Do I know you?" When Miles jogs his memory, Q notes he was "one of the little people."

Auction: Quark hosts one for a group of the very rich to sell Vash's findings.

Didn't Think This Through: Q spends several minutes antagonizing Sisko and then places the two of them in a boxing match, i.e. a socially acceptable situation to punch somebody in the face. What did he think was going to happen?

Hit Me, Dammit!: Q, and he's rather surprised when Sisko takes him up on the offer (though gleefully remarks about how Sisko is easier to provoke than Picard, who even at his most annoyed never rose above sternly-worded rebukes).

I Am Not Him: Q gets in a few digs about Sisko being inferior to Picard. Sisko has precisely zero interest in his mind-games, although Q does prove he's "easier to provoke".

Ideal Illness Immunity: Q shows Vash (quite graphically) that "a tiny little insect" bite would have eventually killed her, if he had not been there.

Mundane Made Awesome: Bashir starts the episode with an overly dramatic account of one of his exams at Starfleet Medical.

Not Me This Time: Q insists that he's not the cause of the station's power drains. Still, he's staying around to watch a station get ripped apart by a wormhole.

One-Shot Character: This is the only episode of Deep Space Nine to feature Q. Some fans like to think he was just too afraid of Sisko after this. Others think that Sisko showed Q all he needed in one scene (i.e. humans being warlike and aggressive).

The Show Must Go On: Q takes the time to warn everyone at Quark's auction that the station is heading for the wormhole and they're going to die. Naturally, Quark keeps going with the auction.

Technobabble: Q refers to it by name - the writers, who liked it about as much as the audience, relished the chance.

"Picard and his lackeys would have solved all this technobabble hours ago!"

Whammy Bid: Q makes one at Quark's auction just to be a Troll. He does seem willing to pay it later, but Vash refuses.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy